iftly upward,--and as it receded,
passing westward like a panorama. I could see, through the faint haze of
smoke, the innumerable roofs chimney-set, the narrow roadways, stippled
with people and conveyances, the little specks of squares, and the church
steeples like thorns sticking out of the fabric. But it spun away as the
earth rotated on its axis, and in a few seconds (as it seemed) I was over
the scattered clumps of town about Ealing, the little Thames a thread of
blue to the south, and the Chiltern Hills and the North Downs coming up
like the rim of a basin, far away and faint with haze. Up I rushed. And at
first I had not the faintest conception what this headlong rush upward
could mean.

Every moment the circle of scenery beneath me grew wider and wider, and
the details of town and field, of hill and valley, got more and more hazy
and pale and indistinct, a luminous grey was mingled more and more with
the blue of the hills and the green of the open meadows; and a little
patch of cloud, low and far to the west, shone ever more dazzlingly white.
Above, as the veil of atmosphere between myself and outer space grew
thinner, the sky, which had been a fair springtime blue at first, grew
deeper and richer in colour, passing steadily through the intervening
shades, until presently it was as dark as the blue sky of midnight, and
presently as black as the blackness of a frosty starlight, and at last as
black as no blackness I had ever beheld. And first one star, and then
many, and at last an innumerable host broke out upon the sky: more stars
than anyone has ever seen from the face of the earth. For the blueness of
the sky in the light of the sun and stars sifted and spread abroad
blindingly: there is diffused light even in the darkest skies of winter,
and we do not see the stars by day only because of the dazzling
irradiation of the sun. But now I saw things--I know not how; assuredly
with no mortal eyes--and that defect of bedazzlement blinded me no longer.
The sun was incredibly strange and wonderful. The body of it was a disc of
blinding white light: not yellowish, as it seems to those who live upon
the earth, but livid white, all streaked with scarlet streaks and rimmed
about with a fringe of writhing tongues of red fire. And shooting half-way
across the heavens from either side of it and brighter than the Milky Way,
were two pinions of silver white, making it look more like those winged
globes I have seen in Egyptian